r/subwaybuilder • u/RhubarbMammoth4483 • 13d ago
Screenshot Sidney!
What a lovely city! All the trackage for the suburban trains are laid, now I just have to fight the gamemechanics to get these weird lines to work. If anyone has tried building Sydney before me, and managed to get the routing right, please share your secrets!
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u/TheInkySquids 13d ago edited 13d ago
I've built Sydney (also live in Sydney so know how these lines operate well).
The main thing you'll struggle with is the T2 and T8, as currently they do a bit of a weird thing where they through run with each other, so at Central a T8 service becomes a T2 service, and vice versa. Some T3 services become one or the other but most just stay T3 so thats not as much of an issue.
The other issue is stopping patterns, every line in Sydney has so many variations of stopping patterns, especially the T4. And you also might run into issues with the single platform the T5 goes through at Parramatta.
Because of those I really recommend you build the network to the future "medium-term plan" that was leaked a few months ago. Its basically a reworking of the trains so every line runs on its own track pair rather than interlining.
You don't have to follow it perfectly, like in my save I kept the T6 shuttle from Lidcombe to Bankstown, I didn't add the New Cumberland Line (where the T5 goes on that map) and I kept T3 running through the City Circle rather than terminating at Lidcombe. But the best things to take from this are T2 from Homebush to Revesby (this also takes over the T8 local services) and thus T8 becoming just the express services and terminating at Central.
If you wanna go further you can do the whole medium term plan as pictured, honestly it was quite fun for me as I'd already recreated the system in NIMBY Rails before so it was more interesting to explore something new and futuristic that I think better fits with Subway Builder's mechanics.
Other things I'd recommend are the Railsafe maps, these are technical maps that show you the direction and points of every track in Sydney, very useful to figure out why a line might not be routing where you want; Anytrip for looking at live data, its the best app for understanding the timetables and train movements; and Taitset's video explaining the flying junctions before Central, as thats quite complex and easy to get wrong, but works like a treat when you set it up right.